The Pentagon stated last year that China had “an operational nuclear warhead stockpile in low-200s,” and STRATCOM commander Adm. Regardless, the silo construction represents a significant increase of the Chinese arsenal, which the Federation of American Scientists currently estimates includes approximately 350 nuclear warheads. It should be emphasized that it is unknown how China will operate the new silos and how many warheads each missile will carry. If the new silos are loaded with the new MIRVed DF-41 ICBMs, then Chinese ICBMs could potentially carry more than 875 warheads (assuming 3 warheads per missile) when the Yumen and Hami missile silo fields are completed. If they are all loaded with single-warhead missiles, then the number of warheads on Chinese ICBMs could potentially increase from about 185 warheads today to as many as 415 warheads. It is unclear how China will operate the new silos, whether it will load all of them with missiles or if a portion will be used as empty decoys. The 250 new silos under construction are in addition to the force of approximately 100 road-mobile ICBM launchers that PLARF deploys at more than a dozen bases. The Chinese missile silo program constitutes the most extensive silo construction since the US and Soviet missile silo construction during the Cold War. The number of new Chinese silos under construction exceeds the number of silo-based ICBMs operated by Russia, and constitutes more than half of the size of the entire US ICBM force. With 120 silos under construction at Yumen, another 110 silos at Hami, a dozen silos at Jilantai, and possibly more silos being added in existing DF-5 deployment areas, the People’s Liberation Army Rocket Force (PLARF) appears to have approximately 250 silos under construction – more than ten times the number of ICBM silos in operation today. China has for decades operated about 20 silos for liquid-fuel DF-5 ICBMs. The silo construction at Yumen and Hami constitutes the most significant expansion of the Chinese nuclear arsenal ever. The Hami missile silo field has a grid-pattern where the silos are located approximately 3 kilometers from each other.
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